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Read This First

If EVER the Western world needed a book, it needs this one now! In no area of human life has there been such drastic social change as in that of SEX. The so-called "New Morality," first unleashed by World War I, intensified by World War II, completely KO'd Western civilization during the decades of the fifties, sixties and seventies. Prior to the first World War, it was illegal in the United States to publish, sell or distribute a book of instruction on the subject of sex. After World War I an avalanche of books, pamphlets, magazine and newspaper articles, teachings on sex, descended on the public. Yet in all this, the most vitally needed dimension of knowledge was missing. During the fifties, sixties, seventies and into the eighties, sex has been hurled at the public in every manner -- in movies, in television, in all advertising, in TV commercials. Everywhere sex came to be freely talked about. Morals relaxed. The "New Morality" became accepted by society. Divorces escalated. Family and home life became almost nonexistent -- yet a solid family structure is the very foundation of a stable and enduring society. There has floated abroad the delusion that whatever is new and different is "more progressive" and "modern," and therefore better. Far more often it is retrogression! The purposes and true meaning of both sex and marriage are extremely vital to know. Physical details can be rightly understood only in the light of what has gone before in this volume. This astonishing knowledge especially as presented in the earlier and middle chapters of this book -- is as vital as it is surprising. It is important to read this book in its rightful order, beginning with Chapter 1. Regardless of how much knowledge the reader may have acquired on the subject, he will find much that is new to him in this book -- and he will come to see this entire subject in an entirely new light. The impetus which started research and gathering of material for this book, in 1949, was the need to produce our own textbook for the Principles of Living course in Ambassador College. However, the accelerating demand from the constantly enlarging readership of "The Plain Truth", now nearly three million subscribers in all parts of the world, necessitated preparation of a work for the instruction of this vast number of people, in all walks of life, and in all levels of education. Purposely, therefore, we have avoided the staid, dry, pedantic, professorial language of scholarship which seems typical of the average university-level textbook. Such writing may inflate the intellectual vanity of the author. But it is our purpose to convey knowledge to the reader. The purpose of words is to convey meaning. We have tried to make this text as plain and understandable as it is frank. We have endeavored to make it easy to read. This work has been produced out of genuine concern and deep compassion for a humanity robbed by false teachings, as well as by ignorance, of the joys, the delights and the rich blessings which have been made possible. But these may be OURS today, if only we will open our minds to receive what has been missing until now. Read and reread it, from beginning to end, with a clean heart, a right spirit and an understanding mind! -- and you will be richly rewarded.

Introduction

Sex in the Eighties -- Where Have Six Decades Brought Us?

THE WORLD HAS EMERGED FROM the age of hush! A moral revolution has swept the world! Few under thirty have any conception of what the previous 4,000-year-long world was like. Few over thirty are aware of the extent to which the "New Morality" has progressed -- in reverse! Little was known about sex. The subject was never discussed. It was unlawful in the United States to publish, sell or distribute any knowledge about sex or teaching in its use. Certainly young married people sorely needed proper information. After World War I the legal dam was removed. The floodgates against published sex information opened. An avalanche of books, magazine and newspaper articles flooded over the United States like a tidal wave. One can hardly pick up a magazine on a newsstand that does not feature at least one article on sex. The medical doctors, the gynecologists, the psycho-analysts, the "sexologists," ground out "authoritative" books conveying information and teaching on the subject of sex. Yet in all this dissemination the MOST ESSENTIAL DIMENSION OF KNOWLEDGE WAS MISSING! It has remained for this present volume to reveal that all-important dimension, its real meaning and purposes. This missing dimension in knowledge has not been revealed by religion, by the medical fraternity, by the "authorities" on the subject nor by higher education. You will find it only in this book. Do NOT GLANCE OVER and past that portion of this book. It is a million times more valuable than the technical-physical knowledge. The latter, without the former can be, ultimately, disastrously fatal! For this is, in true fact, the most important and necessary book ever published on sex! Today we live in a different world. Sex is everywhere discussed, and almost as promiscuously indulged. But the new "freedom" is by no means limited to the sexual response! The modern plunge has dived much deeper than even a modern society is aware! First, take a swift overview of "progress" after a year in the eighties! Then a surprised (to those of thirty and below) glance back into the pre-World War years as it had been for some 4,000 years! Our camera zooms now into the Western world before and after -- two divergent human societies! The contrast ought to arouse the reader to sober thought! -- but will it? Or have we become too lukewarm to be concerned? Our own future and eternity hangs in the balance! Today's condition and trend is so frightening in what it portends, it ought to shock every individual out of complacency into desperate action to reverse the ominous tide! But the FACTS OF LIFE as we speed through the eighties have not hit us SUDDENLY in a twenty-four-hour day or a single week! The deadly contrast is not so apparent -- because it came on us gradually over a period of six decades -- two full generations. The "New Morality" world was spawned after the turn of the century. It developed from the embryo stage during World War I. It surged, mostly among teens unnoticed by their parents on past World War II. The emergence of television after that war gave the trend great impetus. Acceleration sped the downward plunge. The "New Morality" really surfaced during the sixties, blossomed into full bloom in the seventies. Where are we NOW -- after a year into the eighties? In the United States ONE MILLION TEENAGE GIRLS, UNMARRIED, GET PREGNANT EVERY YEAR! Conditions in England, Sweden and Western Europe rival this. Two Johns Hopkins University professors, Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner, in a very recent study, report that 50 percent of the nation's teenage girls -- age 14 to 19 -- have had premarital sex. The survey showed the percentage has significantly increased since 1971! Today, with the avalanche of sex literature and sex education published since World War I and with sex everywhere freely discussed, the teens are indeed "wise" in sexual discussion and sexual experience, but still woefully IGNORANT in sex knowledge. Syracuse University Professor Sol Gordon says fewer than 10 percent of all teenagers have been given any school sex education. And of course they receive little or none from their parents. The gutter-knowledge acquired from their peers is woefully inadequate. Yet they are "wise in their own conceits." Like the boy whose father in agitated embarrassment said, "Johnnie, I think it's time we had a talk about sex." "Fine, Dad," came the answer. "What'd you like to know?" Sex ignorance is testified by the fact of 250,000 reported adolescent gonorrhea cases annually. Not long ago a third of marriages in the United States resulted in divorce. Today the divorce rate has swelled to one half of all marriages! The foundational bulwark of any healthy, stable and permanent society is the FAMILY UNIT. Before World War I it was a rare married woman who worked away from home. I remember, during World War I, my own surprise at seeing women employed for the first time as elevator operators in the Marshall Field store in Chicago! Such jobs never had been for women! Today only 13 percent of U.S. families include a working father, home-making mother and one or more children! What would an Abraham Lincoln think of that! Or even a Theodore Roosevelt! Or a Woodrow Wilson! Would they not turn over in their graves -- if they knew? Over two-and-one-half million American men and women avoid marriage altogether -- yet live together, either as unmarried heterosexuals or as homosexuals. By 1990 a virgin standing at the marriage altar will be a phenomenon. Many ask today, why marriage at all, anyway? Some "experts" say marriage will soon be a thing of the past. There is today a definite conspiracy, active on television, in newspapers and in universities, to do away with the institution of marriage. Though most people in the eighties will marry at least once, there will be a broad variety of options. This will include living alone by choice -- though by no means will it preclude sex. It will include single parentage by women, unmarried twosomes -- both homosexual and heterosexual. It will include communal living and unrelated families. The number of unmarried couples living together doubled in the seventies! Today "authorities" say "change in partnership may be seen as predictable, understandable, even desirable. We'll back away from the notion of lifelong marriage." Loosening attitudes toward sex, shout the "expert" conspirators, will help propel these changes. With legalized abortion, and improved contraception, coming on the eighties horizon are an anti-pregnancy vaccine, birth control implants under the skin, and a birth control pill for men! Sex will be equated with fun, pleasure, enjoyment -- not babies! Since it is a basic truism that a solid family structure is the foundational bulwark of any stable and permanent society, this fact means only one thing -- CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT IS ON THE WAY DOWN -- AND OUT -- unless that great "Unseen Strong Hand from Someplace" soon intervenes and saves today's sick society. But before we leave the world scene of the eighties, bear in mind the present WORLD IN REVOLT is in rebellion against much more than pre-20th century sex repression. And the modern downward spiral of humanity involves a much wider area than sex alone. Today the family structure of Western life is endangered by much more than illicit and promiscuous sex. Along with the modern sex rampage of adolescents has come other addictions that titillate, arouse, stimulate and please the physical senses. Accompanying sexual indulgence has come, in teen life, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, modern X-rated movies, gangsterism, violence. They look for every pleasing, stimulating sensation. Some appeal to the sense of feel. Some to sight. Some to hearing -- like rock and disco music with the sensual beat and the rhythm. Some to the sense of smell. People smell tobacco smoke. Cigarette ads speak only of "taste." But you cannot taste smoke! Believe it or not, you cannot taste smoke! But as the smell of tobacco smoke becomes addictive in the nostril, and affects body and mind in the lungs, so "pot" (marijuana), opium and other smoke affects the MIND, and stimulates. One gets "high" -- experiences new sensations. Heroin and other hard drugs even more so. Nearly all who become hooked on the hard drugs started on marijuana. The movies bring "pleasures" through the sense of sight and of sound. Kids spend hours a day before the "one-eyed monster." It provides a ready-made daydream. And misuse not only dulls the mind, television has been a prime medium by which the anti-family conspiracy has injected its deadly poison into juvenile and adult minds. Make no mistake. Television is an industry devoted to ENTERTAINMENT -- pure and simple! Of course one finds occasionally on TV a truly educational and/or worthwhile program or documentary. But TV is a BUSINESS for PROFIT in America. It provides ENTERTAINMENT so that people have "commercials" selling goods and services thrust before them. The entertainers -- even news announcers who are themselves primarily entertainers -- say before a "commercial break," "Stay tuned," or "We'll be right back -- don't go away." The viewer is literally forced to allow the commercial huckster to inject his sales pitch into the mind. Another modern evil -- seldom recognized as such -- is the working wife and mother. Family life has undergone a RADICAL REVOLUTION! Teens have sex games at home in bed while Dad and Mom are at work. Children do not eat with parents. They seldom go to movies with parents. Parents have their lives, associates and friends apart from the children. Parents never think of teaching children, being with children, maintaining a FAMILY RELATIONSHIP! Parental responsibility is totally neglected. In due time parents are going to be brought to account for this neglect of basic responsibility.

But Now, What a Surprise for the Under-Thirties!

The young people of today have little awareness of the sex and family conditions in pre-war years. In fact, until 1914 there had been little basic change for some 4,000 years! The prior to 1914 years were as different from today's world as day is from night! Parents then, even as now, taught their children nothing about sex. They themselves knew nothing! Their parents never had taught them! Besides, it would have been too embarrassing! The commonly accepted dictum was, "Keep our children innocent through ignorance until marriage -- then instinct will teach them." But instinct did not teach them. Humans, unlike animals, do not come equipped with instinct. Blindly, with a smattering of gutter-acquired misknowledge, the newly married blundered their way into disillusionments, shattered dreams, bitter resentments and frustrations -- and, too often the divorce courts, although divorces were still a rarity. True, a very large percentage of girls were kept "pure." The girl, up until 1914, who lost her virginity unmarried had also "lost her honor." Of course a double standard had developed. Every man wanted a virgin for a wife, but a majority were less careful about male virtue. Yet the girl who had "gone the limit" was "damaged goods." Those under thirty today know little about prevailing attitudes and sexual behavior prior to the two world wars. Contrariwise, if a girl who died at age 22 prior to 1917 were resurrected suddenly back to life today, she would be appalled! -- horrified! -- at the prevailing attitude and behavior of 22-year-old girls today! Just what are the generally unrealized FACTS? What was the real origin of the then traditional Christian morality? And conversely, what triggered the moral revolution -- the so-called "New Morality"? How did TODAY'S moderns come to accept present attitudes and behavior patterns? What has finally, after thousands of years of the "sex-is-shameful" repression, plunged the world into prevalent sexual "freedoms"? And what, after all, is the PLAIN TRUTH? What, after all, are the TRUE VALUES? Was the pre-World War concept better for humanity? Is the present "New Morality" really advancement -- really better for those who are swept along with it? People who lived prior to the 20th century would be aghast if they could see life as it is lived today. Up until World War I people believed in marriage and family life. My own family was typical. I had never known of a divorce or a broken home and family in any of my relatives or ancestors. Marriage was "until death do us part." Any other status or life-style would have been strange and shocking. But what brought this drastic change?

THE MISSING DIMENSION IN SEX

by Herbert W. Armstrong


CHAPTER 1 ..... World in Revolt -- Why This Book Had to Be Written 
CHAPTER 2 ..... Why -- and What Is the Missing Dimension? 
CHAPTER 3 ..... How Shame Entered 
CHAPTER 4 ..... Why Sex? Its TRUE MEANING 
CHAPTER 5 ..... The Divine Purposes of Sex 
CHAPTER 6 ..... But Was Sex Really Necessary? 
CHAPTER 7 ..... Recapturing the True Values of Sex -- the Commanded Functions 
CHAPTER 8 ..... The Biological Differences 
CHAPTER 9 ..... How God Designed Sex 
CHAPTER 10 ...."Fearfully and Wonderfully Made" 
CHAPTER 11 .... The God-Ordained Uses of Sex 
CHAPTER 12 .... Dating -- and Teenage Morality 
CHAPTER 13 .... The Best Age for Marriage 
CHAPTER 14 .... Planned Parenthood, Contraceptives and Sexual Dysfunctions
 CHAPTER 15 .... Engagement -- and Wedding Night

CHAPTER 1

World in Revolt -- Why This Book Had to Be Written

WHY WORLD ACCEPTANCE OF "the New Morality"? What, until 1914, had been the Western world's standard of morality? Was it good or bad? Has a whole world in revolt brought anything better? What have been the FACTS? What have been the CAUSES? It is not only a moral revolution. A revolution in government, in economics, in science and technology, in education, in labor standards and in social values, even in religion, has shaken the whole world! WHY? WHY has the whole world suddenly aroused to violent action? And especially in the area of morals? We will give specific causes a little later. The "authorities" -- the psychoanalysts and the medical doctors -- decided moral standards were in need of revision. And they have been revised, radically, under the catch-phrase "the New Morality"! Yet few realize the facts of the true origin of the "sex-is-shameful" attitude, or of the impetus behind the moral revolution. The facts are stranger than fiction!

The Most Vital Dimension MISSING

The world, since the first World War, as mentioned above, has been deluged with books, pamphlets and articles in magazines and newspapers about sex. Still, the most necessary dimension in knowledge of the subject has been missing -- unpublished until this book! Today protest fills the air. Revolt is everywhere, against almost everything! And in no grievance is revolt so widespread as that against the repressive moral codes of traditional Christianity. The revolters reject the authority of the church. They have embraced what they term "the New Morality." Just what are the generally unknown FACTS? What was the real origin of the traditional Christian morality? Did it come from Christ -- from the original apostles -- from the Bible? And what triggered the moral revolution, and finally plunged the world into the sexual "freedoms" of today?

Origin of the "Old" Morality

Christianity, following its first generation, absorbed the pagan dualism of Greece, and pasted the label "sinful" on sex. Through the centuries since, the moral standards of the Western world were regulated by the Roman Catholic Church. Does that mean, then, that Christ introduced and taught this attitude that sex of itself is shameful and evil? Emphatically it does not! Jesus never represented sex as anything other than that which our Maker created, and all that He had created God pronounced "very good." Jesus taught against wrong uses of sex. He forgave a repentant woman caught in the act of adultery, with the admonition, "Go, and sin no more." The original apostles never deviated from this teaching. The biblical teaching throughout is the same. What, then, was the real source of this attitude of shame? It flowed on the tide of the Babylonian Mystery religion into the Roman world. And how did this concept come to be accepted as Christian? The facts, I repeat, are stranger than fiction. Emphatically it was not the teaching of Hebraism, nor of Jesus, nor of the original Church of God. It reached the Roman world by way of Greece, but it flowed, at an earlier date, into Greece from Egypt. Yet it stems from a still earlier source, to be revealed in the following chapter. In the first and second centuries the Roman world was dotted by pagan schools, on the curricular model established by the Grecian Plato. Plato had received this dualistic attitude toward sex from his teacher, the philosopher Socrates, himself a sex pervert. This dualistic teaching had become the basic hypothesis of all Grecian thought, writing and religion. Sex was regarded as low and degrading, an act in which man descended to the level of the beast. This was the underlying attitude in the teaching of the pagan schools throughout the Roman Empire. There were no Christian schools. To establish such schools would have been impossible. Textbooks had to be written laboriously, by hand, one at a time. The printing press was not to be invented for centuries. All textbooks were pagan. Second- and third-generation Christians were reared and educated from childhood in these pagan schools. By the beginning of the 6th century this dualistic concept toward sex was firmly rooted in western Christianity. It is still the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants in general have passively followed Catholic teaching on sex, but have tended to be more lax in behavior.

The Fruits of Prudery

But what were the real fruits of that dualistic concept of virtue? Some 90 percent of marriages were rendered unhappy -- many utterly miserable and unbearable -- because of false attitudes and sex ignorance. Many a wife was virtually raped on her wedding night. The stupid husband didn't mean to injure his wife. He was just plain IGNORANT! He needed instruction that had been denied him. Many wives called their husbands "BRUTES." They simply were ignorant of the fact that brutes, guided by instinct, are not guilty of such things. Husbands said their wives were "frigid" and too often began to visit prostitutes. What price IGNORANCE! Then came World War I. It brought tremendous changes in thinking, in behavior patterns, in social customs and in the double standard. Women won the vote in America. Wives began entering employment and becoming financially independent.

The Freudian Conclusion

Previously, about 1904, a startling conclusion had been reached by Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. This revolutionary opinion had resulted from his clinical experience and researches. Freud had decided that sexual repression, the attitude of shame, and ignorances about sex were the CAUSES of neuroses and many mental disorders. He and his followers in the newly appearing profession of psychiatry urged knowledge dissemination and sexual freedom as the panacea. If repression and self-denial caused the neurotic disquiet, why not reverse the interpretation of morality? Emancipate the people from restraints. Put a new definition on sex. Define it as GOOD, not degrading, shameful and EVIL -- any use of sex, in or out of marriage. In the wake of World War I the agitation resulting from Freud's revolutionary conclusions finally brought about the toppling of the legal barriers. And the moral barriers began breaking down simultaneously. With the removal of legal restraints against sex instruction, medical doctors and psychoanalysts began grinding out volume after volume imparting heretofore banned instruction about sex. Previously, the publication of knowledge in other fields had been accelerating. But in the delicate area of knowledge about sex the medical and associated professions had held a monopoly. Now sex information was hurled at the public from all directions. Even today almost every magazine one might pick up off a newsstand will contain at least one article on the subject of sex, as noted earlier. Even the most conservative magazines. Besides there are magazines devoted wholly to sex and I do not mean pornographic magazines.

The "New Morality" Appears

Yet something has been criminally wrong with this avalanche of sex literature. There has been missing the most vital dimension. The world began throwing off the restraints. The revolt was on, against prudery, repression and ignorance. The new sensual knowledge -- with its most-needed dimension missing -- quickly began to be gulped in by curiosity-hungry minds. World War II shot morals into the gutter. And now they have plunged all the way into the cesspool. Permissiveness is the current fad. Today, it is actually becoming popular in more and more colleges and universities to allow students to visit the dorm rooms of those of opposite sex at any or all hours around the clock -- and sleep with them if desired. Many have introduced the system of "co-ed dorms" -- both men's rooms and girls' in opposite wings on the same floor, no restrictions whatsoever. Today pornography is rampant on many school and college grounds, and smut has become a multimillion-dollar industry in country after country. Today we have "progressed" completely past "topless" bars and restaurants. When they became no longer shocking, "bottomless" followed, and finally, the supreme jolt as a shocker -- and in several places -- to entertain a lust-gripped audience, actual live sexual intercourse performed in the nude on stage. Not simulated. "For REAL!" Along with this trend had come the hippies, "rock-festival" orgies attended by thousands, fast-growing drug addiction, hundreds of thousands literally "blowing their minds!" I mentioned, above, that the revolters have rejected the authority of the church. But where is the authority for a right moral code?

Do Humans Really Know Right from Wrong?

After all, what is right? -- and what is wrong? What is really best for each individual? It is generally assumed that every sane person "knows the difference between right and wrong." But DO THEY? Many Roman Catholics still think any use of sex outside of marriage is sin -- and therefore wrong. Perhaps a few non-Catholics still believe the same thing. On the other hand, millions now believe in the "New Morality." They believe in complete sexual freedom. They believe denial and repression is wrong. And even a very large segment of Catholics are relaxing their attitudes! There are other views in between. What is the truth? The TRUTH is that the most tragically needed dimension in sex knowledge has been MISSING!

Now Even Marriage Being Questioned

In the modern rebellion against just about everything -- including puritanical taboos -- the world is tending to reject any and all authority, and is turning more and more to impulse and unbridled desire. Now some psychiatrists are questioning the institution of marriage! Who started the marriage custom, anyway? And WHEN? If man is merely the highest evolvement of the animal kingdom, WHEN, in the evolutionary development from lower animal into man, did marriage with home and family life start -- and WHY? Animals do not marry. They have no "home life." Yet all animals reproduce. Marriage is not necessary for reproduction. Do we really need any AUTHORITY for what is right or wrong about sex -- about marriage? Is sexual freedom by mutual consent really harmful to anybody? Is the game, becoming prevalent, of husband-and-wife-swapping wrong -- is it harming the participants -- or is it beneficial? Let's see what MODERN SCIENCE -- and the SCIENTIFIC METHOD has contributed. Vital NEW KNOWLEDGE awaits the reader.

CHAPTER 2



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